“Not bad, thanks,” she replied.

They exchanged pleasantries for several minutes after sitting down, before falling silent. The Professor looked down at his desk.

“Why have you cleared up, Mamdouh?” Gail asked.

He gave a deep sigh and looked her in the eyes. “Because I cannot lie to myself any longer. Being in this office reminds me every day of what I have let happen. I will resign in the morning.”

She was taken aback by his statement. “No! You –”

“Gail, I have to tell you the truth,” he interrupted her. “At least what little I know of it.” He fished a piece of paper out of the top drawer and passed it across the desk. “Before I forget, you may want to contact this man later; he called for you earlier.”

She read the note. Martín Antunez, again! It was followed by a phone number. Like I don’t have more important things to do than talk to him! She shook her head and put it in her pocket.

“Please let me tell you everything, without interruption, and then we can discuss things,” he said.

Gail reluctantly agreed.

“You will certainly remember when you first set foot in the Amarna Library, Gail. That day, you walked into a veritable treasure trove, the single most impressive archaeological find I have ever witnessed. Certainly on a par with Howard Carter more than a hundred years ago. But I was not entirely honest with you that day.” He paused to moisten his lips. “Months before our excavations at Amarna began, I was contacted by an American man; an old friend who studied Anthropology with me at Harvard. His name is Dr Henry Patterson. I hadn’t heard from him in years, and we spent a good hour on the phone reminiscing about old times. It turned out he was calling because he had heard of my excavation.

“I was amazed; the excavation wasn’t exactly high profile, barely a blip on the Supreme Council of Antiquities’ radar. Why would he know of it? He explained to me that he worked for an agency in the States, based near Tampa in Florida. They had reason to believe that certain finds from Amarna could be extremely damaging to the political stability of the region. How they knew of these finds, he could not fully reveal, but he suggested that his agency’s investigations pointed to an as-yet undiscovered text, somehow related to Nefertiti. If we were to find the text and reveal it publicly, his agency felt the repercussions would be disastrous.

“Of course, as I listened to him explain all of this I could not stop myself from laughing out loud. It sounded completely preposterous, like a prank call. I accused him of playing such a joke, but he flatly denied it. Instead, he offered me help. On top of providing materials and equipment to aid in our work, his agency would take responsibility for removing the offending finds in the event that we uncovered them, and help ‘oil the wheels of bureaucracy’ if required. That basically meant baksheesh. They would also ensure that no loose ends were left lying around to give anything away. You saw the men from the agency when you were on the dig, Gail.”

“The engineers,” she whispered.

“Yes, the engineers. They were attached to me from day one. I reported all of the finds to them. From the moment they arrived, I regretted agreeing to work with this agency. I always felt like they were spying on me, on the dig, and on all of my students. There was something dark, something oppressive about their presence that made me want to call him up and tell him they could leave right away. But I never did, and when I found out what they wanted to hide, I was glad I hadn’t.

“The engineers pretended to make the Library ‘safe’ for us to investigate, Gail. In truth, they went in to find what they were looking for and remove it.”

“The second book on the plinth.”

“Yes. We were left with one volume of a two-book set, Gail. What they took away was removed from the Library as cleanly as possible, they even scattered dust around the plinth so that nobody could guess anything was amiss. I spoke to Patterson by phone shortly before you entered the Library, and demanded that he tell me what they were hiding. What had been so important that the biggest discovery in living memory was to be spoilt by an agency I knew nothing about? I had trusted him because we had been friends, but on seeing the engineers on site with their damned suitcase, I wanted to know everything.

“Patterson calmed me down as best he could over the phone and told me that I could not see the find whilst still on site. However, before it was shipped to its final destination, God knows where, he promised that I would be able to look at it. He was as good as his word, and on his request I journeyed to Cairo the day after you first entered the Library.

“Patterson met me in this very building, in my old office down the hall. One of the engineers was with him, and they had made space for their case on my desk. I had already signed a document stating I would not divulge anything to third parties about our arrangement, but they made me sign another form before they would open the case. They were quite forceful, but to be honest I probably would have signed anything at that point: my curiosity was more powerful than anything. Then the engineer opened the case and Patterson ushered me forwards.

“I will never forget my first sight of the book, Gail, my first glimpse of the cover. It was exactly the same dimensions as the Stickman volume, except that it was thicker: it probably contained half as many pages again as your volume. Its cover was also wooden, with a bound spine. On it had been engraved a picture, in the same fashion as the Stickman. My God! They would have looked impressive together!”

“Wait,” Gail said. “You said that this so-called agency wanted to stop information from being spread from Amarna to the outside world, and so went to all this trouble to hide one book. But there were hundreds and hundreds of different books in that room, how did they know for sure that they had removed the only one that mattered? What if my book had also contained something important, or what if one of the hundreds of scrolls that we haven’t even looked at did?”

Mamdouh shook his head. “I have no idea, Gail. Somehow, they knew that there was only one book to take care of. They certainly didn’t have time to read anything whilst in the Library. They couldn’t have checked the entire Stickman book in that time, and believe me after having read it myself I can assure you that it makes no reference to the content of the book they took away. Their information must have been well sourced, but I’m at a loss from thereon in. And I have not heard from the agency since that day in my office.”

“What made this book so special then?” she asked.

“In itself, the cover was interesting enough. The engraving showed a human figure holding a long staff aloft, as if in defiance. But it was upon opening the book that the true surprise came.  It was mostly illustrations, accompanied by small segments of text, a mixture of hieroglyphs and hieratic. Full page drawings of people living in vast cities that we would classify, even today, as futuristic; filled with flying machines, vehicles of all descriptions, towering skyscrapers, sprawling forest-parks with fountains and paths. It was like looking at a science-fiction landscape. Then there were pictures of farms rolling over hills to the horizon, seascapes showing fleets of strange vessels. The text below, in the little time I had to read and quickly translate it, simply described the illustrations, like an encyclopaedia, with comments like Ancient City with administrative centre or Agricultural Environment. And then suddenly, the mood of the illustrations changed. I turned the page, and it was like a vast hand had been swept across the city from the previous pages. Everything was razed to the ground, people were running in all directions in obvious panic. I barely had time to take the scenes in, however, because as soon as I had turned the page the engineer stepped forward and closed the book, quite forcefully moving me aside. I have not seen or heard from it since.”